The company will also expand fact-checking features for images, add privacy features to Messenger, and do more to take action on posts, images, hashtags and other content or behaviour that it calls "borderline"; material or actions that don't technically violate the company's rules but can lead to harmful outcomes.

"As content gets closer and closer to the line of community standards, we actually see that it gets more and more engagement," said Facebook operations specialist Henry Silverman at an event at the social network's headquarters in California. "It's the reason for the old newspaper adage, if it bleeds, it leads."

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In Messenger, one of Facebook's chat apps, the company is adding a verified badge, the blue check mark that already is included on Facebook profiles, intended to help people distinguish between real accounts and impersonators. People will also be able to be notified if they join conversations and video chats that include people that they have previously blocked.

On Instagram, the company says it will remove more sexually suggestive and other borderline content from its Explore and Discovery tabs, two features where people find new accounts and posts that they didn't explicitly seek out. Users who seek out terms like #porn, #cocaine, and #opioids find a blank page on the company's Explore tab, and the company will be increasing the numbers of blocked terms.

"We have this higher bar when Instagram is recommending you content for accounts that you haven't specifically chosen to follow or to search for," said product manager Will Ruben.

Facebook is also enabling people to get more information about the groups that they join. People will be able to see the history of the group's name changes, because many junk political news sites frequently change their names. If people in a group repeatedly share information that has been rated false by fact-checkers, the company will reduce the reach of the group as a whole, cutting down on the number of Facebook users that the algorithms suggest should join a group.

Washington Post